http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IN JANUARY 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
gave a speech excluding South Korea from the
"defensive perimeter" of East Asia. In June 1950,
North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and
attacked South Korea. To this day no one knows
for sure whether Acheson's speech inspired the
attack. But Joseph Stalin twice had forbidden North
Korean attacks in 1949, and Acheson's defense of
his speech was uncharacteristically unpersuasive.
The lesson is clear. If you know you're going to
have to defend an ally from attack–as President
Truman quickly realized–then let everyone know in
advance. Ambiguity doesn't mollify; it invites attack.

The Clinton administration seems to be ignoring
this lesson. On July 9, Taiwan's President Lee
Teng-hui called for "special state-to-state relations"
between Taiwan and China. Chinese leaders
responded with typically furious invective, sent jets
buzzing to the midpoint of the Taiwan Strait, and
moved a surface-to-air missile unit to the shore. The
Clintonites have weighed in against Taiwan and for
China, holding up an arms sale and delaying an
air-defense advisory mission. Bill Clinton has
repeated his support of Beijing's "three noes" and,
when Lee backtracked, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright said, "I think the explanations
offered thus far don't quite do it." The administration
says that it has warned both China and Taiwan that
use of force across the Taiwan Strait would be "a
matter of grave concern," echoing the ambiguous
language of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. But
there is a risk that Chinese leaders could decide
that Taiwan is outside our "defensive perimeter" and
that they could seize Taiwan's islands without
retaliation.

"Coddling"? Yet in the Clinton years we have
seldom gotten what we wanted when we appeased
China, whereas we succeeded the one time we
stood firm. That was in March 1996, when China
lobbed missiles near Taiwan's major ports just
before Taiwan's elections. Defense Secretary
William Perry persuaded Clinton to order two
aircraft carrier groups to the area, and the Chinese
stopped firing. This was in contrast to the usual
supine and submissive Clinton policy. In 1992,
candidate Clinton denounced George Bush's
"coddling" of China, and in 1993 President Clinton
promised to revoke China's most-favored-nation
trading status if it didn't improve its human-rights
record. China refused to respond; in May 1994
Clinton caved, and he has backed renewal of the
status ever since. He encouraged the late Ron
Brown's trade missions to China (many executives
on board made $100,000 campaign contributions),
attended a White House coffee with associates of
Chinese arms dealers, and allowed the retargeting
of Chinese missiles by employees of defense
contractors Hughes and Loral (the latter headed by
the Democratic Party's No. 1 contributor in 1996).

Clinton generated campaign contributions by
accommodating CEOs dazzled by "a billion
customers," though few firms have made much
profit in China (and none has shown a similar
interest in the billion customers in India, with its
British legal system and English-speaking elite). To
evade the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton moved
up his 1998 trip to China from November to June.
During the visit, China gave up little and received
everything it wanted: the first presidential
endorsement of its "three noes," no independence
for Taiwan, no United Nations seat, and no U.S.
recognition of two Chinas.

Clinton can claim that in pursuing a "strategic
partnership" with China he has followed the lead of
every president since Richard Nixon, as the Los
Angeles Times's James Mann shows in About
Face, his illuminating history of U.S.-China
relations since 1971. Nixon recognized China and
told Mao Zedong that we were "tacit allies" primarily
as a counterweight to the Soviet Union; intelligence
cooperation, military aid, and formal diplomatic
relations soon followed. U.S. presidents ignored
China's human-rights record or predicted blithely
that it would improve; all assumed China's leaders
were solidly in control of a stable and economically
growing country. The events of 1989 should have
punctured these balloons. Mass demonstrations in
early 1989 showed that many Chinese opposed
their leaders; the Tiananmen Square massacre in
June showed the leaders had no regard for human
rights. The collapse of the Soviet empire in East
Europe in 1989-91 removed the need for a Russian
counterweight and let the Chinese use their arms to
target newly democratic Taiwan.

One must hope that Clinton's appeasement of
China does not thrust us into military conflict–and
that the next administration's China policy will be
based on post-1989 reality, not CEOs' illusions and
presidents' fund-raising needs. Economically,
China's power is often overestimated; the U.S.
exports more to Taiwan. Militarily, China's power is
limited now, but–thanks partly to the secrets we let
the Chinese learn, the high-performance computers
we've sold them, and the missiles Hughes and Loral
helped them aim–it could be a strategic threat in 10
or 20 years. Mann's narrative supports the
argument that China behaves better when
confronted. Do the 2000 presidential candidates
know that, and will the new president in
2001?